


I've Got Friends (In All the Right Places)

by hailtherandom



Series: Ficmas 2k14 [7]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: And Not Getting Into Each Other's Pants For Once, Avengers Tower, Banter, Bonding Over AC/DC, Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers Friendship, Characters Being Bros, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Drabble Collection, Drinking, Everyone Is a Good Bro!, Friendship, Gen, Howling Commandos Era, James Rhodes & Tony Stark Friendship, Knives, Natasha Is a Good Bro, Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark Friendship, Pepper Wants to Know What's Up With Natasha, Platonic Relationships, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Battle of New York (Marvel), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rhodey Is a Good Bro, SHIELD Is Gone and Natasha Isn't Taking It Very Well, Singing, Snark, Tony Is a Good Bro, Tony Stark Has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, World War II, World War II Steve Rogers, post-Afghanistan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 09:31:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3244679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hailtherandom/pseuds/hailtherandom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five drabbles about people, their relationships, and where they stand in the world.</p><p>(See chapter summaries for prompts.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Steve and Bucky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ricochet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ricochet/gifts).



> Christmas present for [R](http://post-and-out.tumblr.com)!
> 
> Title yanked from the Manchester Orchestra song of the same name.
> 
> These drabbles are posted chronologically in the MCU.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Bucky and Steve getting lost somewhere, and snarking at each other while they get back on track.

“Your compass is broken.”

“Like shit it is. Your eyes are broken.”

"Your face'll be broken in a minute if you don't shut up."

Bucky thumps him on the back of the head. Steve's wearing his helmet so it doesn't hurt at all, but he smacks backwards at Bucky anyway they hike through the forest.

“Dum Dum’s gonna get you bad for being late,” Bucky says. “There’s even chipped beef for dinner tonight, and if we miss out, I swear…”

“If you don’t stop whining, you’re gonna be the chipped beef,” Steve mutters. He drops his pack and sits down on a fallen log, unfolding the map he’s been carrying in his pocket. “I don’t get it. We should have hit the base camp by now. It said to turn north back there.”

“You know that north is the one shaped like an N, right?” Bucky asks, overly genuine. “You _do_ know what an N looks like, right?”

“It looks a lot like my boot going up your ass in a minute.” Steve turns Bucky’s compass one way, then the other. “Where did you even get this thing?”

“General issue.”

“General piece of crap, more like. This thing wouldn’t know true north if there was a sign and a red carpet.”

“Give me that.” Bucky steals his compass out of Steve’s hands and holds it up. Sure enough, the needle wiggles as he turns it, but it doesn’t point the same direction twice. “Huh.”

“Yeah, _huh_ ,” Steve repeats mockingly. “Come on, let’s go back.”

Bucky hikes his pack higher up on his back and groans. “See if I agree to go on the next stakeout with you.”

“See if I ask you to come with me.” Steve pulls his own pack back on and starts the long trudge back the direction they came. “All you did was whine. I’ll get Falsworth or Dernier to come with me next time, they’d be a damn sight more useful.”

“You should bring Morita instead,” Bucky suggests. “Since he’s the only one qualified to pull that massive stick out of your ass.”

Steve punches him in the shoulder. Bucky keeps himself from going flying, but Steve’s punches now are a lot harder than they used to be, so he does stumble to the right a couple steps.

“Sorry,” Steve says, and he even sounds half-sincere.

“It’s alright. Just remember I ain’t a punching bag,” Bucky says. “Save it for the Nazis.”

“Oh, I’m well practiced in punching Nazis. I punched Adolf Hitler in the face over two hundred times.”

“No one listens to you anymore when you say that, you know?”

“Look, when you’re a glorified chorus girl, you take what you can get.”

“Mm, I wish you were a chorus girl. Would make stakeouts so much more fun.”

“Get your brain outta your dick, Buck,” Steve says, a hint of a smirk in his voice.

“I’m just sayin’, dames out here aren’t like the dames back home.”

“Is it because most of ‘em could kick your ass down a flight of stairs if you looked at ‘em wrong?”

“Aw, Steve, that was one time. And she didn’t even kick me.”

“You’re a charmer, Buck.”

Bucky laughs quietly. The sound is stolen away by the rustle of wind through the trees.

Steve checks his watch. “When did we say we’d be back at base?”

“Eighteen hundred-ish?”

“Oops,” Steve says.

“Why, what time is it?”

“I ain’t telling you, you’ll just complain.”

“But Steve, I’m hungry.” Bucky puts on his best whining voice. “And we’ve been out here for ages.”

“You had lunch.”

“That was hours ago!”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Better than what we used to get in Brooklyn.”

Bucky shrugs one shoulder and steps over a dead log. They’re getting close to the turn point, though Steve’s not entirely sure he’ll recognize it coming the other way.

“Hey Buck, do me a favor?”

“Hm?”

“Walk backwards so we don’t miss the turn point.”

“Go fuck yourself, Rogers.”

“I’m not kidding,” Steve says, completely failing to sound serious. “I don’t wanna miss it and go too far.”

“I’m not walking backwards through the fuckin’ woods looking for a tree with an X carved on it.”

“I could order you to do it.”

Bucky snorts. “There’s no way.”

“What if I said it all captain-like?” Steve draws himself up to his full (impressively tall) height and clears his throat. “Sergeant Barnes, I _order_ you to walk backwards through the fuckin' woods looking for a tree with an X carved on it.”

Bucky lets out a cackle, covering his mouth with one hand and slapping at Steve’s arm with the other. “You sound like one of those announcers from the films.”

Steve deflates a little with a sheepish grin. “Yeah, a bit. The guys give me hell for it.”

“Aww, Stevie,” Bucky says. “They give you hell for lots of other things too.”

“You’re an ass, Barnes.”

“And you’re still a punk.”

They march in silence for a while. Steve’s body angles sideways more and more until he’s sidestepping through the trees, glancing at every trunk they find. No X appears, and he’s starting to get worried that they missed it again when someone clears their throat loudly.

Steve’s crouched on one knee with his gun in his hand before he even sees who it is. Bucky drops his pack like it’s on fire and throws himself behind a tree, then slowly peeks out when he doesn’t hear Steve’s gun fire.

Dugan is leaning against a particularly thick tree, arms crossed over his chest. Steve can see a hint of a smirk under his moustache in the fading light. He stands up and mumbles a word of apology as he slides his gun back into its holster. Bucky slinks back out from behind the tree trunk and retrieves his pack, holstering his own weapon.

“You ladies look like you’re lost,” Dugan says.”

“Stow it, Dums,” Bucky says.

“You know that’s west, right?”

“Well, it sure as hell wasn’t north,” Steve says. “But Buck’s compass apparently has about as much brains as he does.”

“Which is to say, none at all?”

“None whatsoever,” Steve confirms.

Bucky smacks the back of Steve’s helmet again, and it does hurt a little this time, but not enough to make Steve do anything more than laugh.

“You two are in luck,” Dugan says. “There’s still dinner at camp. Only problem is, only one set of rations left. I reckon you’ll have to fight it out.”

“You lookin’ to bet?” Bucky asks as the three of them take off down the right path. Steve can already smell the faint aroma of smoked meat wafting toward them.

“There ain’t no horses out here. We do the best we can.”

They hike until the forest opens up into a little field, broken by tents sticking up into the sky and a fire already crackling. The remaining four Commandos look up when they return and raise their tin mugs in greeting. Steve gives them a little salute back, until Bucky bumps him on his way past and leaps over the log Morita and Jones are sitting on to reach the chipped beef before Steve. Steve just shakes his head and laughs and discards his pack by a tent before rolling his sleeves up and getting ready to tackle Bucky to the dirt floor.

 


	2. Tony and Rhodey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Rhodey and Tony working out how they fit once Tony gets sober, or if it’s MCU, when Tony gets back from Afghanistan.

It’s not that Tony doesn’t trust Rhodey. He does. He absolutely does.

It’s not that Tony thinks Rhodey’s going to do anything, either. Rhodey’s been to his lab literally hundreds of times over the years, and he’s never broken anything that Tony didn’t tell him he could break, never even moved anything out of place. Rhodey is the perfect lab guest, when Tony really thinks about it, because everyone else moves things around or hands him things or both.

But lately, every time Rhodey’s over, hanging around the house or in Tony’s lab, Tony starts getting an anxious, creeping feeling when he can’t see him. Rhodey wanders around the lab, looking at new sketches and half-rendered holographs of the armor, and Tony feels like he’s going to crawl out of his skin.

It must be the arc reactor. It _must_ be.

Tony feels the hum and the pull of it like it’s still connected to a car battery in the middle of a cave. It hums and it pulls and it never stops, like it’s trying to pull his chest open. Tony grips the edge of a workbench with one hand, breathing heavily through his nose. “JARVIS, lock up.”

“Yes, sir,” JARVIS replies, and all the entrances of his lab lock with an audible _click_.

“Where’s Rhodey?” Tony asks.

“Colonel Rhodes is in the next room of the lab,” JARVIS reports. “Although he’s now walking toward–”

“Hey, Tony, you okay?” Rhodey’s voice comes around the corner, and then Rhodey himself appears.

Tony lets out a breath he hadn’t realized that he was holding and stumbles back against the workbench.

“Whoa, hey.” Rhodey skirts around tables as he jogs over to Tony, wrapping one arm around Tony’s shoulders to support himself. “Are you okay? Are you gonna pass out?”

“No, I’m fine.” Tony shoves weakly at Rhodey’s chest, but it’s not forceful enough to move Rhodey at all.

“Is it your chest thing?”

“No, the arc reactor is fine.”

“Then what’s up? Why’re you freaking out on me?”

“I…” Tony closes his eyes and shakes his head. “I wasn’t. You’re imagining things, Rhodey. I am so fine right now. I am the finest.”

“You are the most full of shit.” Rhodey reaches out with one leg and hooks his foot around a chair leg, then drags the chair over and pushes Tony down into it. “Tell me what’s up.”

Tony rubs his hands over his face. He’s sweaty – when did he start sweating? He doesn’t remember sweating. He doesn’t remember a whole lot of today, really. It should probably worry him more than it does.”

“Tones?” Rhodey prompts softly.

“I couldn’t see you,” Tony mumbles.

“What do you mean?”

“I couldn’t see you,” Tony repeats. “And it…” He waves one hand at himself.

Rhodey looks at him intently, then presses two fingers to Tony’s neck, just under his jaw. “Your heartbeat is really elevated,” he murmurs. “Are you sure nothing’s wrong with the reactor?”

“The reactor’s fine,” Tony says adamantly. Rhodey moves to stand up and Tony reaches out without thinking, grabbing the collar of Rhodey’s shirt. Rhodey sinks back down, balancing on one knee as he wipes a trickle of sweat off of Tony’s face.

“Alright, alright, I’m not going anywhere. If I stay, can you calm down for me?”

Tony nods.

“Okay. I’m gonna stay right here. I’m gonna stay with you here in the lab,” Rhodey says comfortingly. “I’m just gonna sit up here on the table, okay?”

Tony nods and lets go of Rhodey’s shirt. Rhodey pulls the collar back into place and hops up on the workbench next to Tony’s chair. Tony reaches over and touches Rhodey’s knee, like he’s not entirely sure that he’s there.

“Do you know why you’re panicking?” Rhodey asks.

“Not panicking.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re panicking right now.”

“I don’t panic.”

“Okay, whatever. Do you know why you’re feeling all this way?”

“Told you, I couldn’t see you.”

“And that freaks you out?”

“No,” Tony says automatically, even though they both know it’s a lie. “...Yes? I don’t know.”

“Let’s go with yes,” Rhodey says gently. He cards one hand through Tony’s hair. Tony twitches, but he doesn’t pull away. He craves the touch, but at the same time, he wants to pull away. All of his cuts are gone or mostly gone. His concussion has been pronounced healed. There’s no water in the lab, aside from the bottles Tony keeps stashed around in various cabinets. No one is yelling. No one is forcing him down and shoving his face into his own missiles. No one is branding him with the dirtiest versions of his own name.

“Hey,” Rhodey says urgently. “Deep breath.”

Tony blinks rapidly as he realizes that he’s hyperventilating. Rhodey’s holding onto his shoulder, squeezing a little. He coaxes Tony through a breath after deep breaths, until the shaking - when did he start shaking? - abates. Rhodey’s hand is a constant presence on his shoulder, on his back, rubbing rhythmically and smoothing out the wrinkles of his t-shirt over and over again. It feels so nice that Tony wants to tear away from it.

“Let’s try again,” Rhodey says softly. “Do you know what’s going on?”

“Panicked.”

“I kinda got that. Do you know why?”

“Got caught up…”

“Did you have a flashback?”

Tony’s nod is a short, jerky thing, a one time motion that he doesn’t want to make, but Rhodey somehow drags it out of him anyway.

“I’m sorry, Tones,” Rhodey says. He nudges his knee against Tony’s shoulder. Tony nudges back. “You’re okay, though.”

“Don’t like not seeing you,” Tony mumbles. “It’s like… Last time.”

“Last time, when you rode in the other hummer?”

Tony nods again.

“Oh, Tony.”

Tony picks at the nails of one hand. There hasn’t been any dried blood under them for weeks, but he still feels like he needs to clean them every time he looks at his hands. Rhodey pulls Tony’s hands apart and presses them flat against Tony’s thighs. “You’ll give yourself an infection.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I think you need some rest, Tones.”

“No, I have the suit…”

“Rest,” Rhodey repeats firmly. “This suit ain’t going anywhere unless you tell it to. Let’s go upstairs.”

“I need to work.”

“You need to slow down. You need to sleep.”

Tony shakes his head weakly.

“I’ll still be there,” Rhodey promises. “I’ll read Pepper’s magazines or something. I told you, I’m not going anywhere.”

Tony wants to fight, but his body knows Rhodey’s right, so his body slumps in acquiescence and hangs off of Rhodey as Rhodey wraps his arm around his chest and helps him stand up and walk out of the lab and upstairs to the living room. Rhodey drapes him across the couch and tucks a throw blanket around him, then sits down at the foot of the couch with an outdated copy of Time. Tony stares at him and Rhodey lets him, one hand rubbing Tony’s shin and the other turning pages, until Tony’s eyes grow too heavy to keep watch.

He dreams of Afghanistan, of wasting away in that cave, of his chest being ripped open and tied together with wire and steel, but when he wakes up, Rhodey is still there, keeping watch, just like he promised. The arc reactor hums and pulls, like it always does, but it’s not pulling anywhere in particular right now.

 


	3. Pepper and Natasha

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Nat and Pepper sorting out how they relate when she’s Natasha and not Natalie anymore.

“Who _are_ you?” Pepper blurts out one morning across the kitchen table.

Natasha starts and glances up from her toast, eyes wide. “What?”

They’re having breakfast at Stark Tower – well, it’s Avengers Tower now, or so Tony keeps calling it. It’s close enough. The A is still there, up on the roof, and all the rest of the sign’s debris has only recently been cleared away. Banner isn’t in the country anymore, and Rogers has gone back to Brooklyn, and Thor is back on Asgard, so it hardly qualifies as Avengers Tower if only two of them are there at a time.

Well. Three, sometimes. Clint’s been spending a lot of time in SHIELD medical for the last couple weeks but they let him out on occasion. Natasha thinks it’s out of pity more than anything.

Which is how they end up here. Natasha has been nursing several broken fingers and a dislocated shoulder, and Stark Tower (excuse her, _Avengers_ Tower) is one of the safest places she can think of at the moment, now that Tony’s jacked up the security considerably. He blusters around talking about making her her own floor, which they both know she won’t take, but there is a spare bedroom on one of the residential floors, and it’s good for now. Especially since all her safe houses in New York state have been blown up or toppled over or both.

Pepper is staring at her intently as she stirs sugar into a mug of tea. (The mug has an Iron Man mask on it, and Natasha has to fight not to roll her eyes.) “I’m sorry, that was abrupt, but… Who are you, actually? I don’t even know your real name.”

“Natasha is my name.”

“Just like Natalie was?”

Natasha frowns a little. “My real name is Natasha. Natasha Romanoff.”

“That sounds Russian.”

“It was.”

Pepper’s eyebrows draw together. “Was?”

“Whether or not I’m still legally Russian is a matter of technicality.”

Pepper is quiet for a moment. “Was Natasha always your name?”

Natasha tilts her head to the side, just a little. “I don’t know, maybe.”

“Look, I’m just trying to figure out who the hell the person living in my building is,” Pepper says, with more than a little irritation. “You spied on me and my company and you showed up for that– that _Asgardian_ , two weeks ago. I think I deserve to know who you are.”

“No, I– I really don’t know.” Natasha’s gaze falters for the first time. “I like to think it was.”

“Oh,” Pepper says. “Are you–?”

“SHIELD is not the worst place I’ve worked for."

“Oh. Can I ask…?”

“No,” Natasha says shortly, then takes another bite of toast.

Pepper glowers a little, but doesn’t press. Instead, she sips her tea, watching Natasha over the rim of the mug.

“I was assigned to monitor Tony Stark, back in 2010, to evaluate his eligibility for the Avengers Initiative,” Natasha says suddenly.

“Right. I didn’t– I, uh.”

“You knew that.”

“...Yes.”

Natasha scoffs. “Of course you did. Leave it to Stark.”

Pepper shrugs one shoulder.

“Evaluating Stark required getting into his personal sphere, on SHIELD’s orders. His personal sphere… Centers around you,” Natasha says carefully. “And getting close to Tony Stark required getting close to you and your company. And I apologize.”

Pepper opens her mouth, but can’t think of anything to say, so she fills it with tea instead of words.

“I will admit that you were lucky to have me,” Natasha adds. “Since your security was inadequate, to say the least, against Hammer and Vanko. But I’m sorry for the circumstances around it.”

“I don’t suppose it matters anymore,” Pepper says. “Since Tony ended up on the Avengers thingy anyway.”

“He wasn’t supposed to,” Natasha replies. “I wasn’t either, to be honest. I work for STRIKE, which is a division in SHIELD. All this that just happened was… unusual circumstances.”

Pepper snorts. “You could say that.”

“None of us were supposed to be Avengers, really. Fury probably would have recruited Captain Rogers if he’d known about him, but the timetable with Project Pegasus kind of controlled everything after he came out of the ice.”

“Project Pegasus?”

“It was a research and development project of SHIELD’s, using the Tesseract to create weapons to hold off any extraterrestrial attacks.”

“Wait, you mean SHIELD developing weapons was the reason all this happened?”

“No,” Natasha says sharply.

“What were you doing, developing mass weaponry stores anyway?”

“Don’t forget what company you own, Ms. Potts.”

Two faint red splotches appear on Pepper’s cheeks. “Stark Industries doesn’t make weapons anymore.”

“Anything is a weapon in the right hands,” Natasha says.

Pepper considers this for a moment. She sips her tea and stares at the woman sitting across from her. “I feel like that tells me more about you than anything else you’ve said, Natasha.”

Natasha shrugs again. “When you’re in danger, you use what you have to protect yourself.”

Pepper glances quickly to Natasha’s shoulder and back. Natasha inclines her head forward a fraction of an inch.

“Did you– I mean…” Pepper starts. Then, “Tony doesn’t trust you.”

Natasha’s even stare doesn’t break. “I know.”

“I’m not sure I do either.”

“I’m sure you don’t. I wouldn’t expect you to.” Natasha pops her last bite of toast in her mouth. “That doesn’t mean I won’t protect you too, though.”

Then she stands up and walks out of the kitchen, tossing her napkin in the recycling bin on the way out. Pepper stares after her until she hears the door of the residential floor snap shut.


	4. Natasha and Tony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Nat and Tony being bros. (this one was actually mine, R likes Tony and Natasha and I like Tony and Natasha being bros.)

Tony comes down the stairs from the R&D floors into the kitchen, wiping a spot of grease off of his forehead with the heel of one hand. He doesn’t really succeed in anything besides smudging it down one eyebrow, but Pepper’s not around to make him clean up and Bruce is covered in machine parts nearly as often as he is these days. As long as he doesn’t get it on his bed, he’s fine. He just needs some water now. He’ll deal with cleanup later.

_“All you women who want a man of the street_   
_Don't know which way you wanna turn…”_

Tony looks up from the sink, head cocked toward the lounge. That’s definitely AC/DC playing in the next room over, and that’s definitely the faint scratch of his old record player - a beat up hand-me-down from Mr. Jarvis that he kept out of nostalgia rather than functionality - ticking every second or so.

_“Just keep coming and put your hand out to me_   
_Cause I'm the one who's gonna make you burn…”_

Tony turns off the sink’s faucet and sets his glass on the counter. Bruce is still in the lab and Pepper doesn’t like AC/DC or records. Maybe JARVIS is messing with him. The AI has seemed to be in a more teasing mood lately, which would be an astounding miracle of technology if it wasn’t so occasionally frustrating.

Tony creeps out around the doorway to the kitchen, taking note of everything that he could throw at an intruder. Not that there would be an intruder, and not that the Tower’s defenses couldn’t take an intruder down if one did manage to get in.

There’s a nice vase on the shelf. That will smash nicely.

Then a soft voice comes from behind one of the recliner chairs facing away from him.

“Shoot to thrill, play to kill. I got too many women and too many pills.”

Tony stills his hand, wrapped around centuries old porcelain, and blinks dumbly.

“Shoot to thrill, play to kill. I got my gun at the ready, gonna fire at will!”

A shock of red hair appears over the top of the recliner, then falls back down.

Tony stares and puts the vase back on the shelf with a thud.

“Afternoon, Stark,” Natasha’s voice says from the recliner.

“How long have you been here?”

“A few hours.” There’s a thin clink, and then a quiet thump of something hard on wood.

“JARVIS didn’t say anything.”

“Imagine that.”

Tony circles around the lounge until Natasha becomes visible, hidden in the large recliner. She has a blanket on her lap and a book in her hand, and is running the tip of one finger around the rim of a glass half-full of amber something. She glances up when she sees him and offers him a small smile, then goes back to reading.

“You’re listening to my records.”

“Uh huh.”

“How do you even know who AC/DC is? You’re an infant.”

“Even Steve knows who AC/DC is.”

“They formed before you were even born.”

“Yeah, and you were three. So what?”

“How do you know when– nah, of course you know,” Tony says, shaking his head.

“You don’t have a monopoly on classic rock, you know,” Natasha says. The corner of her mouth quirks up. “I’ll have you know that I own at least one band t-shirt from a band that definitely exists.”

“How about bands that don’t exist?”

“I’ve been in a few bands that don’t exist,” Natasha says. “You see all sorts of interesting covers, working for SHIELD.”

“Huh. Do you play?”

Natasha shakes her head. “I danced. Never learned to play anything. Clint has a guitar, though. He can play.”

“That is the least surprising thing I’ve ever heard,” Tony says.

Natasha chuckles and takes another sip from her glass.

“Is that… Is that my booze?”

“Yep. You didn’t have vodka, so I had to settle for what I’m assuming is your good scotch.”

Tony glares. “All my scotch is good scotch.”

Natasha quirks an eyebrow. “You certainly pay a good scotch price.”

“Give me that.” Tony reaches for the glass bottle, but Natasha snatches it from under his hand before he even touches the neck. “...Hang on a second. Are you wearing a smoking jacket?”

“It’s called a cardigan,” Natasha says.

“You look like someone’s dad.”

“Then call me 'Daddy',” Natasha deadpans.

Tony fails to hold back his snort of laughter.

“Here. If you’re going to steal all of my crap, at least give me some too.” He retrieves another tumbler from the cabinet in the lounge and hands it to Natasha. Natasha pours him a very generous portion of scotch and passes the glass back. Tony inhales deeply, then takes a sip. “God, I have good taste.”

“You have a _lot_ of taste, that’s for sure. I’m not sure if it’s _good_.”

“Don’t knock it if you’re gonna drink it.”

Natasha raps two knuckles on the rim of her glass. “I’m knocking it. What are you going to do about it?”

It takes Tony a minute, but then he laughs again. 'Shoot to Thrill' ends and the old record player makes a sad ticking noise.

“That’s like your theme song, isn’t it?” Natasha says.

“What, sad ticking?”

“What?”

“Never mind. What is?”

“‘Shoot to Thrill’,” Natasha clarifies. “That’s just you all over, isn’t it? That’s what you used for your big entrance, way the hell back when.”

“Oh. I guess.”

“Back in Germany. You stepped all over my PA system.”

“Oh, right, you mean that time I hacked your Quinjet with absolutely no effort?”

“And yet all you did was play Back in Black.”

“There were Capsicles to be saved. That seemed like a higher priority,” Tony says nobly. “I’ll hack another one, if you want.”

“I don’t think that would go over well with anyone else.”

“They’re big boys, they can handle it.”

Natasha snorts. “You’d be surprised.”

The next song plays, ticking along. Natasha swallows a mouthful of scotch and sings along. “You working in bars and riding in cars, never gonna give it for free.” She glances at Tony out of the corner of her eye and grins a little. “Your apartment with a view on the finest avenue looking at your beat on the street.”

Tony raises his eyebrows. “Is that how we’re gonna be?”

Natasha winks.

“Alright then.” Tony sets his glass to the side. “You're always pushin', shovin', satisfied with nothing. You _bitch_ , you must be gettin' old.”

Natasha laughs openly, bright and loud, and misses the next line. Tony doesn’t think he’s ever seen her this cheerful. It’s a nice change of pace from being shit scared of her.

Natasha taps her fingers on the arm of the recliner as the chorus gears up. “Honey!” she crows. “What do you do for money?”

“Honey!” Tony echoes. “What do you do money?”

“Where do you get your kicks?” They finish in unison. Tony takes a long swig from his glass. He can see Natasha is still smiling.

“You should come up to the lab sometime,” he says. “Music helps me think, so I play it a lot. Bruce doesn’t like it that much, but he gets into it sometimes.”

Natasha tilts her head to the side. “Mm. Maybe. Do I get to play with your toys too?”

“I _guess_ ,” Tony says dramatically. “If you can keep DUM-E off your ass.”

“I’m sure that won’t be a problem. I need to repair my Widow’s Bites anyway. They’re still kind of fucked up from New York.”

“I can fix those for you, you know. I can upgrade them past SHIELD’s wildest dream.”

“I’m sure you could,” Natasha says. “But where’s the fun in letting you do it?”

She picks up her book and turns the page and starts reading again. Tony considers a smartass answer, but he finds that he doesn’t actually need one. The record keeps spinning, keeps ticking obnoxiously, and every now and then, the songs are punctuated with the slick turn of a page. He watches her for a while, sipping at her scotch without looking away from her book and humming along, and gets up to flip the record over without her asking when the first side ends.


	5. Natasha and Clint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Clint and Natasha and after there is no more SHIELD.

He finds her on the couch in one of the last safe houses he checks.

She’s staring straight ahead at the opposite wall, a small throwing knife in one hand and an old-fashioned whetstone in the other. The stone makes a distressing scraping noise every time it slides down the blade. Clint’s eye twitches, but he doesn’t ask her to stop. Instead, he just sits down next to her and picks up an already-sharpened blade, holding it up to the light.

“Nice.”

“It got dulled against a HYDRA agent’s sternum.”

“What an asshole.”

“Mm.”

The whetstone grinds against the steel. Clint feels like he’s going to crawl out of his own skin.

He digs a cleaning cloth out of her bag of supplies and carefully polishes each blade as she sharpens them. At some point, Natasha stops laying them on the table and just starts handing them to Clint. He cleans each one until the metal shines before tucking them back in their cases.

Abruptly, Natasha pulls her arm back and Clint barely sees the flash of movement before there’s a knife embedded in the wall across from them.

“That’s gonna affect your security deposit,” he says eventually.

“It’s gone.”

The words hover in the air between them for long seconds of silence. Natasha stares at the knife in the wall and Clint stares at the table, counting the knives wrapped up in woven nylon and plastic sheaths.

“It’s _gone_ , Clint,” she repeats. Her voice cracks a little. Clint doesn’t remember the last time he heard Natasha’s voice break, but there it is, ripping itself out of her throat.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Yeah, it is.”

“It was a lie,” Natasha says through gritted teeth. “The entire thing was a lie. They brought me into a lie, _you_ brought me into a lie–”

“Hey, now–”

Natasha throws another knife. It slams into the plaster with a crack. A little puff of dust spurts out, then floats gently to the ground.

Natasha shakes her head, then bows it slightly. Her hair falls around her face like a curtain. “I tried to go straight.”

“I know.”

“ _You_ tried to go straight.”

“I’ve never really been good at going straight with the right people. Our bad luck.”

“It could have been us.”

Clint blinks. Natasha doesn’t look up, but her shoulders hunch forward slightly.

“What could have?”

“It was STRIKE. I saw them. I saw them gun down our own. The entire team, the one that’s been running with Steve. Maybe all of STRIKE, people we _worked_ with…”

“Yeah. I know.”

“That could have been us, Clint. That could have been us shooting our way through SHIELD.”

Clint shakes his head. “No. It couldn’t have.”

Natasha glances at him through a gap in her hair.

“Nat, trust me on this. You are not the sort of person who would just go jump on the bandwagon of a neo-Nazi organization.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Clint sighs quietly through his nose, then reaches over and wraps his arm around Natasha’s shoulder. He pulls her back gently and she goes easily, leaning against his side. He leans his cheek on the top of her head.

“We aren’t exactly the pinnacle of morality, but you’d never be HYDRA. And it’s different from the KGB, the Red Room. They never gave you a choice. Here, you have a choice. And you wouldn’t have made that call.”

“That’s what we always do, isn’t it?” Natasha says ruefully. “We make different calls.”

“I don’t know about you, but I never regret my calls,” Clint says. “Not that one and not this one.”

Natasha smiles a little, but it’s short-lived. “I don’t know what to do now.”

“What are you doing out here?”

“I told Steve I needed to go find a new cover.”

“Then I guess you should go find a new cover. Can you really use one anymore, though?” Clint asks. “You saved the country twice and your files are all over the internet. We’re not secrets anymore.”

“I need one,” Natasha confirms. “For me.”

“For you?”

“Just in case.”

Clint frowns, but nods against Natasha’s head. “Just in case.”

“I’m thinking of going blonde.”

Clint pauses, then laughs hard. Natasha grins against his shoulder.

“What, you don’t think I could pull off blonde?”

“Tony’ll go after you.”

“He wouldn’t dare.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

They untangle after a moment and go back to cleaning knives. When they’re done, Natasha packs up all the cases in her bag and they search each room for anything incriminating. Then Clint slips out the door to wait in the car.

Natasha stands in the tiny living room, bag in hand, and stares around the abandoned house for a minute, then turns off the light on her way out.

 


End file.
